Is there a special place in your home where you feel especially connected with your family? For one little girl that place is a window at her grandparents' house; their Hello, Goodbye Window.
In this Caldecott award winning picture book, The Hello, Goodbye Window, written by Norton Juster and illustrated by Chris Raschka, a little girl describes all the magical reasons why this one ordinary window is so special. As she states at the start of the story this special window “looks like a regular window, but it's not.” When she is dropped off at her grandparents' house, she continues her little ritual of peeking into the special window and greeting her Nanny and Poppy. As the story progresses she tells of the many cozy family events that transpire in their house and relates them back to the magic window.
The illustrations created by Chris Raschka are playful and drawn through the eyes of a child. Each page is filled with splashes of color and highlight all the fun the little girl has with her grandparents. Raschka used multiple techniques when creating these illustrations, which encourages the readers eyes to search the page for the different details. The little stories depicted in the writing evoke sweet family memories and would be a great addition to any family's storybook collection.
One way to utilize this book in the classroom is as a writing prompt for students to creatively describe their own special place or people waiting for them at home. This could be in the form of a journal or their own book. They could even draw their own Hello Goodbye Windows using their own memories to personalize it.
Do you have a special place filled with wonderful memories? I know I do.
Great description of the book, and I really like the picture with the book cover and the inside pages showing. But I want to read more, I want to hear more about how you feel about the book, or felt when you were reading it!
ReplyDeleteKerry, have you ever read "The Phantom Tollbooth?" It's probably what Norton Juster is most famous for. As a kid, I could reread that book. I always wanted someone to drop off a tollbooth that would take me to another land!!! You should check it out. Hmmm, maybe another Book Club book?!? Also, this book looks good. I remember I told you I checked it out to use for one of my own book reads, but I just couldn't do it. The illustrations are really distracting to me, and I hate to say it, but I did not like the illustrations at all. I know they are meant to be seen through the eyes of a child, but they literally almost gave me a headache because I thought they were so muddled. That being said, it is a great book about diversity and multiculturalism because the girl is a girl of mixed race with her grandparents being white and African American. Are there any books you've ever read where the story was great but the illustrations just made you walk away?
ReplyDelete